Russia and Iran sign strategic agreement days before Trump’s inauguration

Friday, January 17, during a visit to Moscow, the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran Massoud Pezechkian, a moderate candidate who created a surprise during the July 2024 elections following the death of Ebrahim Raissi, signed with Vladimir Putin a comprehensive strategic agreement.

While the treaty does not contain a commitment to mutual defense, it does provide fairly robust clauses regarding military cooperation, intelligence sharing, internal repression, information security/cybersecurity and sanctions evasion. .

• A first part is devoted to relations in the field of security, including consultations in the field of intelligence (article 4), the establishment of a working group in the military field to plan joint exercises (5) , “anti-terrorist” cooperation which seems to open the door to mutual support in internal repression (7), as well as judicial cooperation (8).
• Unlike the strategic agreement between Russia and North Korea, which provides that, in the event of aggression, “the signatories coordinate their positions and agree on practical measures in order to mutually help each other eliminate the threat”, no similar clause is present in the treaty with Iran.
• However, Article 5.4 provides that “the Contracting Parties shall consult and cooperate in combating common military threats and threats to the security of the two States or the region.”
• The following articles provide for the strengthening of economic relations, with a section devoted to the common fight against international sanctions (19), in continuation of a declaration signed on December 5, 2023 as well as the creation of a payment platform independent of any third country (20).
• A section is devoted to scientific cooperation in the field of medicine and space exploration (28-31).
• Several articles detail cooperation in higher education and research, including exchanges, the promotion and translation of Russian and Persian literature, the development of cultural centers and sports exchanges (31-37).
• Cooperation in the field of civilian nuclear energy and research and development could complicate negotiations around Iran’s nuclear program.
• Cooperation and mutual consultations in areas related to environmental protection are also planned(38-40).
• The last articles stipulate the duration of the agreement – ​​20 years – its renewal every five years following this period, and the conditions of its implementation by ratification.

The agreement therefore provides for in-depth cooperation and provides the framework for potential rapprochement in the strategic, political, economic, scientific and cultural fields. The scale of the agreement is evident from the name it bears: “comprehensive” in Persian, “djâmé” (جامع), which recalls the adjective used to describe the 2015 Iranian nuclear agreement “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action » (برنامه جامع اقدام مشترک).

If the Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs insisted that the signing of this agreement had no link with “recent events” it can only be read in the light of the common strategic defeat for Russia and Iran represented by the fall of Bashar al-Assad. This effectively put an end to the Iranian axis of resistance and deprived Russia of one of its oldest and most loyal allies in the region. Additionally, Donald Trump’s inauguration next week will likely mark the start of a new phase of “maximum pressure 2.0” against Iran.

For some analysts, Russia has no interest in getting excessively close to Iran, in order to maintain a lever of pressure on Israel. This partly explains why the treaty is less binding than the one between Russia and North Korea. .

The signing of this agreement is the culmination of a rapprochement between the two countries which has been built over the last twenty years.

• The previous strategic agreement between Russia and Iran dated from 2001, signed between Vladimir Putin, at the head of Russia for two years, and the reformist president Mohammad Khatami who was completing his first term. It remained quite general and contained no mention of “strategic partnership”.
• Scheduled for a period of 10 years, it was ultimately renewed for five years several times, but Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and his Russian counterpart agreed in 2019 that it was necessary to sign a new treaty defining relations. between the two countries.
• The signing of a new strategic agreement was also one of Ebrahim Raïssi’s main foreign policy objectives.
• The start of the large-scale invasion of Ukraine has profoundly changed the dynamics between the two countries, placing Russia in a position to seek closer relations with Iran, as evidenced by the Caspian Sea summit in June. 2022, during which Vladimir Putin declared that relations between Iran and Russia were “deeply strategic in nature”.
• After three years of negotiations, the content of the treaty was finalized on the sidelines of the BRICS Kazan Summit in October 2024. The rapprochement of Russia and Iran is part of a broader context of structuring a “south global”, or at least of a coalition of interests wishing to rebalance the global balance of forces .